Chicago gets props for being a city that thought way ahead about its green space: When the neighborhoods that are now Humboldt Park, Garfield Park and North Lawndale were still peripheral, city planners engaged the likes of Jens Jensen to create the West Side’s great green string of majestic parks and boulevards. Burnham’s “forever open, clear and free” lakefront is a shining testament to the power of public space for creating a high quality of life. But, as recently chronicled in the Chicago Tribune, all 50 wards do not enjoy this green space bounty. In fact, the community of South Lawndale – more commonly known as Little Village – contains the least green space per capita of any Chicago neighborhood.

Mi Idea: Users can view and submit ideas for Mi Parque, as well as vote on ideas they like best. By integrating the app with their Facebook accounts, users can share their favorite ideas with their Facebook friends (or simply do so via text messaging) and encourage them to vote them up, too.

Mi Voto: Users can participate in community polls and vote on ideas posted about how to best use the park.

Mi Mapa. Users can locate park sites, open lands, and community gardens in Little Village and view where alerts are being posted block by block.

The collaborative nature of its design. Chicago-based techie Pallavi Anderson noticed the distinct lack of a female presence in apps competitions, and vowed to do something about it. A few emails later, she had a dream team of women software engineers from Motorola Solutions, Orbitz, Pearson VUE, and Thomson Reuters/Hubbard One, all ready to donate their expertise by mentoring aspiring developers from Columbia College Chicago, Illinois Institute of Technology, and University of Illinois-Chicago. This talented group, however, needed a need. Enter LVEJO: During Pallavi’s outreach, someone suggested she contact Mindy Faber of Open Youth Networks at Columbia College Chicago, who had a long-standing relationship with LVEJO and its environmental advocacy in Little Village. A brilliant app was born. (For a complete list of the women participating in this all-star team, visit http://miparquelv.wordpress.com/about/.)

It raises the bar for the role of community in the design of public space. We are so excited about the potential to adapt the concept to other neighborhoods, other needs, and other public spaces.

I’ll close with one final heartening detail: The $2,500 cash prize will go not to the female volunteers who spent long weekends crafting the winning platform. Instead, at their request, the check is made out to the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, in support of their work advocating for healthy and safe green space for its residents.

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For more than 80 years, the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) has made the Chicago region a better place to live and work by partnering with businesses, communities and governments to address the area's toughest planning and development challenges. MPC works to solve today's urgent problems while consistently thinking ahead to prepare the region for the needs of tomorrow. Read more about our work »